Emacspeak-8.0 (BlackDog) Release Notes

For Immediate Release

What Is It?

Emacspeak is a fully functional audio desktop that provides
complete eyes-free access to all major 32 and 64 bit
operating environments. By seamlessly blending all aspects of
the Internet such as Web-surfing and electronic messaging
into the audio desktop, Emacspeak enables speech access to
local and remote information with a consistent and
well-integrated user interface.

Major Enhancements

Efficient navigation and browsing of structured and
multicolumn WWW pages:

Browse tables by either row or column.

Automatically generated table of contents

Single click access to RealAudio content from
anywhere on the Emacspeak desktop.

Speech-enabling extensions for the following:

Customizing Emacs: emacspeak-custom.el

Buffer specific navigation: emacspeak-imenu.el

Java Development Environment: emacspeak-jde.el

Browsing Software: emacspeak-speedbar.el

Browsing Multiple Mail Spools: emacspeak-mspools.el

Developing Python Software: emacspeak-python.el

Additional user-visible enhancements:

Dired Improvements: emacspeak-dired.el

Running Remote Emacspeak Sessions: emacspeak-remote.el

Terminal Enhancements: emacspeak-eterm.el

Speech-Enabled Menubar Support

Enhanced Navigation In Completion Buffers

Emacspeak Clipboard

See the Emacspeak distribution for details.

Independent Test Results

Independent test results have proven that unlike some modern
software, Emacspeak-98 can be easily uninstalled without
adversely affecting the continued performance of the
computer. These same tests also revealed that once
uninstalled, the user stopped functioning altogether.

Industry experts welcomed these results as a refreshing
breath of Courage Certainty and Clarity (CCC) at a time
when users are reeling from the Fear Uncertainty and
Doubt (FUD) unleashed by complex software systems
backed by even more convoluted press releases.

Speaking with Aster Labrador this morning, the creator
of Emacspeak pointed out that these results once again
emphasize the user-centric design of Emacspeak;

It is the user --and not the computer-- that
stops functioning when Emacspeak is uninstalled!

History

Emacspeak-8.0 --(AKA Emacspeak-98++) code named BlackDog--
is a major upgrade to the speech output extension to Emacs.
Emacspeak-95 (code named Illinois) was released on the
Internet in May 1995 as the first complete speech interface
to UNIX workstations. The subsequent release, Emacspeak-96
(code named Egypt) made available in May 1996 provided
significant enhancements to the interface. Emacspeak-97
(Tennessee) went further in providing a true audio desktop.
Emacspeak-98 integrated Internetworking
into all aspects of the audio desktop to provide the first
fully interactive speech-enabled WebTop. This release
re-establishes user-centric computing as demonstrated in
the test results described earlier in this announcement.

Obtaining Emacspeak

Visit Emacspeak at http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman
--You can also pick up emacspeak via anonymous ftp from
ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/raman/emacspeak/.
You can subscribe to the emacspeak mailing list
emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu by sending mail to the list
owner
greg e. priest-dorman.

Based at Cornell (NY) http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman
--home to some of the most innovative auditory interfaces on
the WWW-- Emacspeak is mirrored world-wide by an
international netwrok of software archives and bundled with
all major Linux distributions. The Emacspeak mailing list
is archived at
Vassar --the home of the Emacspeak mailing list-- thanks
to Greg Priest-Dorman.